Indore: Top guns pledge to make city smarter

Indore: Considering it their social responsibility, both elite institutes in city, IIT and IIM came forward to help in better planning of the city as Lok Sabha Speaker and local MP Sumitra Mahajan sought their cooperation during a meeting of educational institutions and city planners here on Monday.

“IIT Indore agreed to help us improving traffic management in the city whereas IIM Indore is ready to offer its expertise in impact assessments, surveys and collection of public feedback,” Mahajan told reporters after chairing the meeting which saw the leading educationists and city planners brainstorming development plans both for urban and rural areas of the district. The meeting was jointly organised by Samsamyik Adhyan Kendra and Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya (DAVV) at Hindi Satya Samiti’s office on RNT Marg.

The meeting found vehicular traffic as the major challenge posed to the city and felt an immediate need to address the nagging issue. While IIT Indore offered to do its part for the improvement of traffic management the IIM owned up responsibility to carry out assessments, surveys and feedback gathering on behalf the civic authorities.

Besides, Narsee Monjee Institute showed its willingness to work with local administration, SGSITS offered its expertise towards the development of Smart City, Shri Vaishnav University proposed to adopt a village and Acropolis institute showed interest in contributing to channelising traffic on Ring Road.

DAVV stated that it was ready to play the role of coordinator between local administration and institutions and offered to set up a centre for cooperation between industry, academia and civic authorities on UTD campus.

School of Journalism and Mass communication head Jayant Sonwalkar observed that the city has an urgent need of creating an online platform for better coordination between institutions, while Arun S Bhatnagar pushed for water harvesting to increase underground water level.

The meeting also observed that despite serious engagement of educational institutions in different social activities, very little was known to public about their efforts.

“There is need for better coordination between educational institutions and also, between local administration, industry and academia,” Mahajan said. In this regard she directed Dhakad to ensure that the academia and city planners meet again in next 15 days to discuss the issues and prepare a blueprint for their redressal. A committee headed by Dhakad, Dubey, Lalwani and Chande was also constituted for the same during the meeting.

IIT-I to house research centre for social science

Jayprakash Narayan Centre for Social Sciences is coming up at IIT Indore, informed IIT Indore director Mathur when economist Ganesh Kawadia lamented that there was no centre for research in social sciences. Mathur further elaborated that the centre at IIT Indore would be used for research by students and faculty members of all institutions. It will be open for all, he added.

Need strong industry-academia ties

The city is progressing but most of its students are going outside for work. This practice needs to be checked and it could be done by stronger ties between industry and academia so that more industry-ready workforce could be produced by educational institutions here

Dr Narendra Dhakad DAVV vice chancellor.

Road mortality rate can be brought down

Road mortality rate could be checked by creating awareness of traffic rules in people. Let’s start the initiative from schools. If school children are taught traffic rules in classrooms, there will be a drastic decline in road mortality rate

Pradeep Mathur IIT Indore director.

Ready to train teachers, guide schools kids

IIM Indore is ready to provide faculty development programmes for teachers of different educational institutions and also, allow school and college students to visit the IIM campus and interact with faculty members to develop understanding and skills. IIM Indore is ready to offer its services wherever needed

Kamal Kishore Jain IIM Indore faculty member.

We can help find faults in underground cables

“Civic authorities are laying underground cables under the Smart City project. We are expert in identifying faults in underground cables as we had found as many as 150 faults in underground cables laid under the BRTS corridor and 60 faults on Super Corridor. We should be involved in the Smart City project.”

RK Saxena SGSITS director.

Need platform to connect admin with institutes

“There is need to create a platform which can connect institute with civic authorities. I tried contacting municipal commissioner Manish Singh many a time but to no avail. The civil society should become a bridge to realise the Smart City dream.”

PK Chande Narsee Monjee Institute director.

“Cleaning of garbage alone won’t help the city in dealing with deadly diseases. We need to ensure that harmful bacteria are also killed by applying proper scientific method and waste disposal.”

Rooplekha Vyas, Holkar college principal.

ADMINSPEAK

Divisional commissioner Sanjay Dubey: An initiative once undertaken jointly by administration and educational institution, should not be hampered due to transfer of involved officers and teachers

Collector Nishant Warwade: Everybody wants to help civic authorities but there is no mechanism in place to receive that help